Voter Participation Centerhttp://www.voterparticipation.org
Research-driven innovation in registering and mobilizing the Rising American Electorate to vote.Fri, 18 May 2018 19:15:57 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.5American Prospect: The Untapped Voting Power of Single Womenhttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2018/05/american-prospect-the-untapped-voting-power-of-single-women/
Fri, 18 May 2018 19:15:57 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=3041Kalena Thomhave of American Prospect writes about our latest report: Unmarried women are less likely than their married counterparts to register and to vote but they could be a key Democratic...

Unmarried women are less likely than their married counterparts to register and to vote but they could be a key Democratic voting bloc in November if candidates get moving to address their issues.

…

A new report from the Washington-based Voter Participation Center, an organization that registers voters and studies voting habits, finds that unmarried women could be a powerful political force, but many don’t vote or aren’t registered to vote. Yet single women make up half of all women and 26 percent of the adult population.

One of the report’s key findings hinges on the “marriage gap”—the difference between how married and unmarried women vote: Marital status plays more of a role in voting behavior than the gender gap, the difference between how men and women vote.

During the 2016 election, about two-thirds of unmarried women were registered to vote, but only 57 percent of those women actually voted. But of those single women who did vote, just 32 percent voted for Donald Trump. (Clinton won married women voters of all races only by a slim majority: 49 percent versus 47 percent.)

While unmarried women are not a homogenous voting bloc, they do share some common characteristics, the center found. Unmarried women are more likely to live in poverty; earn the minimum wage; have higher rates of unemployment; and have fewer savings. Half of unmarried women earn less than $50,000 annually. About 40 percent of unmarried women are women of color, and about a third are under the age of 30.

There are significant obstacles to registration and voting for this cohort, ranging from onerous voter registration requirements (especially for women of color) to inaccessible polling places and frequent address changes (it’s difficult to remain registered if one is moving from state to state). Poverty and job insecurity are also likely culprits, which not only make it difficult to get transportation to far-off polling places or to vote within specified hours, but also affect registration and voter engagement.

To address these issues, the Voter Participation Center specifically targets single women in their voter registration efforts. They also target members of what the center calls the “Rising American Electorate” that face obstacles to voter registration, like young people, communities of color, and other under-represented groups.

“It’s not that easy in this country to register to vote,” says Voter Participation Center President Page Gardner. She explains that her organization “bring[s] the registration process” to these groups through massive mail-in registration campaigns. The center has registered about four million people since its inception in 2003, and about one million of those new voters are unmarried women.

Gardner points out that the growing numbers of unmarried women are an unappreciated political force. “If candidates and policymakers don’t understand the importance of the marriage gap and marital status in the way they run their campaigns or as they think through public policies, it’s just malpractice,” she says.

…

Indeed, the Voter Participation Center’s report points out that unmarried women are disproportionately affected by the divisive policies that continue to come from the Trump administration, which frequently harm women in poverty and women of color. The GOP’s recent tax reform privileges the wealthy over the poor, and through repealing the individual mandate, threatens health-care access to millions, including large numbers of single women.

But the Voter Participation Center also discovered that about one-third of unmarried women who voted in the 2016 election may not vote in 2018. So, if progressive politicians want to shake up the Trumpian status quo in November, they should move boldly to prioritize the economic and social issues that affect single women.

…

]]>New VPC Report – Unmarried Women in America: Cornerstone of our Democracyhttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2018/05/new-vpc-report-unmarried-women-in-america-cornerstone-of-our-democracy/
Fri, 18 May 2018 14:49:18 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=3037New State-By-State Data on Demographics, Voting and Registration Rates, Economic Impact, Health Care, and More Elected Officials and Candidates Must Recognize the Economic and Political Power of Unmarried Women and Speak To Their...

New State-By-State Data on Demographics, Voting and Registration Rates, Economic Impact, Health Care, and More

Elected Officials and Candidates Must Recognize the Economic and Political Power of Unmarried Women and Speak To Their Issues

The Voter Participation Center today released a groundbreaking new report: “Unmarried Women in America: Cornerstone of our Democracy.” The report includes previously unreleased research on unmarried women in key battleground states, including data on demographics, voting and registration rates, age, economic impact, health care, educational attainment, and more.

VPC pioneered the concept of a “marriage gap” among women voters, recognizing that whether a woman is either married or unmarried is one of the most powerful predictors of differences in civic participation and voting behavior. Since VPC’s founding in 2003, it has registered nearly four million people — including nearly one million unmarried women since 2012.

Page Gardner, president and founder of the Voter Participation Center, said: “VPC’s goal is to empower unmarried women and spur elected officials to focus on the issues that are important to unmarried women, like housing, health care, the wage gap, social safety net programs, and more. Unmarried women are one of the largest segments of the economy as first-time home buyers, heads of household, and chief breadwinners – but they’re also younger, more likely to live in poverty, make less money, less likely to invest in the stock market, and have higher unemployment rates. VPC strongly believes that the best way unmarried women can demand change is harnessing their full political power by registering and voting to hold politicians accountable.”

There are more than 58 million unmarried women in the United States – half of all women and 26 percent of all adults. Single women are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the country.

Not all “women voters” are the same. Unmarried women are living drastically different lives than married women in this country. Unmarried women make less money, are more likely to live in poverty, less likely to invest in the stock market, have higher unemployment rates, less savings, fewer have health insurance, and little, if any, dependable retirement income.

However, unmarried women are also one of the largest segments of the economy, whether as first-time home buyers, the sole household decision maker, or the chief breadwinner.Unmarried women—whether as graduates struggling to pay off student loans, upper-income professionals, first-time homeowners, or minimum wage workers holding down two jobs just to survive—are one of the most disproportionately groups impacted by the policies of the Trump Administration and Republican-controlled Congress.

While married and unmarried women were both about 26 percent of the voting eligible population in 2016, married women were more likely to be registered and more likely to vote. In fact, one in 10 unmarried women who were registered in 2016 didn’t vote. If unmarried women are going to hold politicians accountable and force Congress to work on improving things for them and their families, they need to register and vote for candidates who speak to their issues.

]]>Racial Discrimination in Texas Gerrymandering is Politics At Its Worsthttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2018/04/racial-discrimination-in-texas-gerrymandering-is-politics-at-its-worst/
Tue, 24 Apr 2018 14:29:54 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=3032Page Gardner, founder and president of the Voter Participation Center, released the following statement as the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments today in the Texas redistricting case Abbott v. Perez: “Our...

“Our democracy works best when everyone is able to vote under the principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ In Texas, politicians targeted Latino voters and diluted their political power by racially discriminating against voters and gerrymandering them into unconstitutional districts.

“This extreme partisan gerrymandering is politics at its worst – an abuse of power by changing the rules so one party wins, and voters lose. Politicians should spend more time making it easier for eligible people to vote and have their voices heard, and less time rigging the system by racially targeting voters.”

]]>Beaver County Times: Voting mailers encourage minorities, unmarried women and millennials to registerhttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2018/03/beaver-county-times-voting-mailers-encourage-minorities-unmarried-women-and-millennials-to-register/
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:28:19 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=3024By JD Prose More than 2 million mailers, including almost 39,000 in Pennsylvania, from a nonprofit organization that encourages voter registration will be landing in mailboxes across the country on...

More than 2 million mailers, including almost 39,000 in Pennsylvania, from a nonprofit organization that encourages voter registration will be landing in mailboxes across the country on Wednesday.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan Voter Participation Center, 2.2 million Americans in 23 states, and 38,600 Pennsylvanians, will receive the mailers. Specifically, the mailers will target a demographic segment called the Rising American Electorate (RAE), or people of color, millennials and unmarried women.

“More than 1.5 million people of color, unmarried women and millennials aren’t registered in Pennsylvania, which means they aren’t able to have their voices heard in our democracy,” Page Gardner, founder and president of the Voter Participation Center, said in a statement.

“The Rising American Electorate is 51.1 percent of the voting eligible population in Pennsylvania, so the electorate should be reflective of their strength in the population,” Gardner said. “The Voter Participation Center makes it possible for the voices of eligible African-Americans, Latinos, unmarried women and young voters to be heard at the voting booth in November.”

Kevin McAlister, the communications director for the Voter Participation Center, said the RAE group has traditionally been difficult to contact with voter information.

“By using mail, it’s a pretty effective way of reaching these groups,” he said.

McAlister said the mailers in Pennsylvania will contain a state voter registration postage paid form that can be filled out, detached and mailed to the Pennsylvania Department of State for processing.

“We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for eligible people,” he said.

While people of color, millennials and unmarried women account for 51.1 percent of eligible voters (4.9 million), they’re just 48.5 percent of registered voters (3.35 million), equating to about 31 percent, or 1.5 million) being unregistered.

Of the entire RAE group in Pennsylvania, Latinos have the highest unregistered percentage at 37 percent, followed by millennials (34 percent), unmarried women (30 percent) and blacks (25.5 percent).

There will be more mailers going out to unregistered Pennsylvanians in the RAE demo and a digital program as well, McAlister said.

“Pennsylvania is one of our core states,” he said.

McAlister said his organization hopes not only to get RAE eligible voters registered, but encourage them to participate in the midterm elections. A Voter Participation Center study predicted that the drop-off from 2016 presidential election voters to this year’s mid-terms could be “particularly enormous in Pennsylvania,” he said.

The study showed that nearly 1.2 million Pennsylvanians in the RAE demographic who voted in 2016 will not vote this fall, compared to 770,000 voters in the state that fall outside of the RAE demo.

McAlister said that since 2004 the Voter Participation Center has registered nearly 4 million Americans, including 215,000 Pennsylvanians.

]]>New York Times: Single Mothers Are Not the Problemhttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2018/02/new-york-times-single-mothers-not-problem/
Sat, 10 Feb 2018 16:09:37 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=3007By David Brady, Ryan M. Finnigan, and Sabine Hubgen No group is as linked to poverty in the American mind as single mothers. For decades, politicians, journalists and scholars have...

No group is as linked to poverty in the American mind as single mothers. For decades, politicians, journalists and scholars have scrutinized the reasons poor couples fail to use contraception, have children out of wedlock and do not marry.

When the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution formed a bipartisan panel of prominent poverty scholars to write a “Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty” in 2015, its first recommendation was to “promote a new cultural norm surrounding parenthood and marriage.”

The reality, however, is that single motherhood is not the reason we have unusually high poverty in the United States, compared with other rich democracies. In fact, we recently published a study in The American Journal of Sociology, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, which demonstrates that reducing single motherhood here would not substantially reduce poverty.

Single-mother families are a surprisingly small share of our population. Among households headed by working-age adults, 8.8 percent of people lived in single-mother households in 2013 — the most recent year we were able to analyze. The share of people in single-mother households actually declined from 10.5 percent in 1980 and has increased only modestly since 1970, when it was 7.4 percent. True, compared with other rich democracies, America does have a relatively high portion of families headed by single mothers. Nevertheless, we still fall below Ireland and Britain and are quite similar to Australia and Iceland.

Because fewer people are in single-mother families than you’d think, even large reductions in single motherhood would not substantially reduce poverty. We can illustrate this in two ways. First, what would the poverty rate be if single motherhood in the United States was as common as it is in the typical rich democracy? Second, what would poverty in America be if single motherhood returned to the rate it was in 1970?

If single motherhood in the United States were in the middle of the pack among rich democracies instead of the third highest, poverty among working-age households would be less than 1 percentage point lower — 15.4 percent instead of 16.1 percent. If we returned to the 1970 share of single motherhood, poverty would decline a tiny amount — from 16.1 percent to 15.98. If, magically, there were no single mothers in the United States, the poverty rate would still be 14.8 percent.

What really differentiates rich democracies is the penalty attached to single motherhood. Countries make political choices about how well social policies support single mothers. Our political choices result in families headed by single mothers being 14.3 percent more likely to be poor than other families.

Such a severe penalty is unusual. In a majority of rich democracies, single mothers are not more likely to be poor. Denmark, for example, has chosen to provide universal cash benefits and tax credits for children, publicly subsidized child care and health care, and paid parental leave. Because of these generous social policies, single mothers and their children have a similar level of economic security as other families.

A common knee-jerk reaction against generous social policies for single mothers is that they pose a moral hazard and encourage more single motherhood. The problem with this argument is that it is overwhelmingly contradicted by social science. Did the 1996 welfare reform, which made social policies less generous for single mothers, cause a large reduction in single motherhood? No. Do rich democracies with more generous policies for single mothers have more single mothers? No. Do rich democracies with higher penalties for single motherhood have fewer single mothers? No.

Single motherhood is one of four major risks of poverty, which also include unemployment, low levels of education and forming households at young ages. Our research demonstrates a broader point about the risks of poverty. Poverty in America is not unusually high because more people have more of these risk factors. They are actually less common here than they are in the typical rich democracy, and fewer Americans carry these risks today than they did in 1970 or 1980. Even if one infers that risk factors result from bad choices and behaviors, Americans apparently make fewer such choices and engage in fewer such behaviors than people in other rich democracies or than Americans in the past.

The reality is we have unusually high poverty because we have unusually high penalties for all four of these risk factors. For example, if you lack a high school degree in the United States, it increases the probability of your being in poverty by 16.4 percent. In the 28 other rich democracies, a lack of education increases the probability of poverty by less than 5 percent on average. No other country penalizes the less educated nearly as much as we do.

More generous social policies would reduce the penalty for all four risk factors. In fact, increasing the generosity of American social policies would lower poverty more than increasing high school graduation or employment, and more than decreasing the number of people heading a household at a young age or the number of single mothers. Nor would reducing these penalties encourage people to drop out of high school, be unemployed, form households too young or become single mothers.

Ultimately, there simply aren’t enough single mothers to explain our high poverty. Even if they all married or never had children, poverty would not be substantially lower. We should stop obsessing over how many single mothers there are and stop shaming them.

Instead — even though we all get sick of hearing about how great Scandinavian countries are at handling these issues — we should be following the lead of countries like Denmark. If we did, we could reduce poverty among all American families, including those headed by single mothers. No amount of stigmatization could do the same. Rather than falsely claiming that single motherhood is a major cause of poverty, we should support single mothers in raising America’s children.

]]>Campaigns & Elections: New Research Reveals Direct Mail To Be Most Credible Form Of Media Outreach Among Votershttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2018/02/campaigns-elections-direct-mail/
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 21:20:14 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=3003The results were fascinating and informative. But perhaps what stood out most was that voters ranked direct mail as the most credible form of political advertising.

Establishing credibility with voters has never been a more important – and challenging – task for campaigns.

That’s why the United States Postal Service® commissioned a voter survey in the aftermath of last November’s Virginia gubernatorial race. The intent was to explore voter attitudes and beliefs on the efficacy and authenticity of different forms of political outreach.

The results were fascinating and informative. But perhaps what stood out most was that voters ranked direct mail as the most credible form of political advertising.

Among many findings, the survey found that 68% of all surveyed voters ranked direct mail among their three most credible forms of political outreach. This outpaced competing forms of political outreach such as TV (59%), in home visits (47%) and digital ads (26%).

With this year’s elections set to be as competitive as ever, voter scrutiny over advertising techniques is front and center. The race for Virginia Governor was the most competitive gubernatorial election in the country last year, and a closer look at Postal Service® research provides valuable insights for campaigns:

Surveyed voters still see direct mail as a persuasive form of political outreach. When asked to rank the three most persuasive political outreach techniques, voters indicated that television (68%) and direct mail (65%) were highest.
Although these represent two traditional forms of political outreach, they performed far better than many of their newer counterparts. Emails (29%), digital ads (27%) and text messages (8%) all recorded significantly lower levels of persuasion – a trend that carried across every age group.

Virginia voters recorded political mail as helpful in helping them reach a voting decision. 46% of surveyed voters indicated that political mail proved helpful in making their voting decision, coming second only to TV (49%).
Perhaps most striking was that over half of surveyed Millennials (55%) indicated that mail was “very” or “somewhat” helpful in reaching a voting decision, a rate greater than Gen Xers (45%) and Baby Boomers (38%).

Millennials are the most likely to read their mail upon seeing it. In fact, 76% of Millennial respondents indicated that they are very or somewhat likely to read their mail upon seeing it, a figure higher than Gen Xers (65%) and Baby Boomers (61%).
Additionally, the survey reaffirmed the impact that mail can have in driving integrated, multi-channel campaigns. More than half of surveyed Millennials (58%) said that mail was very or somewhat likely to cause them to go to the internet to learn more about a race.

The midterm elections are fast approaching, and the Postal Service has specialists available to help campaigns capitalize on their direct mail outreach with voters. Whether it’s consultation on strategy, compelling mail piece design, or operational support, the Postal Service is committed to helping campaigns. If you want to talk to a direct mail specialist, please contact us directly or visit us at www.deliverthewin.com.

When it comes to reaching voters, political direct mail is a persuasive, credible choice.

*All figures come from a USPS and Summit Research Virginia Post-Election Survey of 900 gubernatorial voters, conducted November 7-9, 2017.

]]>Page Gardner, president and founder of the Voter Participation Center, released the following statement on the Supreme Court arguments today in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute :

“The Supreme Court is the last line of defense against a nationwide voter purge that could take away the right to vote for millions of Americans. When elected officials make it harder to vote like the voter purges in Ohio, they’re taking away this fundamental right for people to have a voice in their communities and their future. We should be doing everything possible to help more eligible people vote, but the Supreme Court has made bad decisions regarding voting rights in the recent past. As we saw when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, states will disenfranchise millions of Americans if the Supreme Court rubber stamps the Ohio voter purges.

“The Rising American Electorate — unmarried women, people of color, and young people — is the majority of citizens and is targeted the most by voter suppression efforts. If efforts to limit the RAE’s political power through voter purges is allowed, it will shatter the best interests of our country and a strong democracy.”

]]>U.S. News: Return of the Rising American Electoratehttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2017/12/u-s-news-return-rising-american-electorate/
Mon, 11 Dec 2017 19:28:16 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=2990Susan Mulligan, writing for U.S. News, points to Voter Participation Center’s report on how the Rising American Electorate will influence upcoming elections: Democrats thought they had it all figured out...

]]>Susan Mulligan, writing for U.S. News, points to Voter Participation Center’s report on how the Rising American Electorate will influence upcoming elections:

Democrats thought they had it all figured out in 2016. Unmarried women, young people, Latinos and other ethnic and racial minorities, otherwise known as the “Rising American Electorate,” were going to be the tipping point that handed Democrats a victory. The Democratic-leaning demographic pack was almost certainly going to get Hillary Clinton elected president and eventually make it hard for Republicans to win races in all but the whitest and aged of states.

It didn’t work out that way. Clinton lost the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, leading the party into another agonizing naval-gazing session. And a consensus emerged that Democrats had foolishly ignored white, working class and middle-class voters, leading voters in struggling, post-industrial states to cast their lot with Donald Trump.

But this year’s November election results have Democrats thinking they shouldn’t be so quick to abandon a Rising American Electorate strategy. From somewhat predictable locales like New Jersey to less likely ones as Kansas, Montana and central Virginia, Democrats won races that would have been longshots even a year ago. And it’s given the out-of-power party hope that energizing these demographic groups next year could win them control of the House and perhaps even the Senate.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., his party’s second-in-command in the House, reckons that there are 91 House seats in play next year, giving the party more than a fighting chance to pick up the 24 seats they’d need to take the majority. Part of that equation is motivating the Rising American Electorate and wooing back at least some of the disaffected white, working class voters (some of whom are now just as disaffected with Trump, Hoyer says).

“We believe our diversity is our strength. We’re the party of inclusion,” Hoyer says. But he stresses that the party needs to deliver a broader message about wages, jobs and the economy. “Are we concerned about our subsets? We are. Does the economy affect people differently? We know that to be the case,” Hoyer says. “But we know that all of them are interested in economic well-being. That’s the common thread that goes through us all.”

The 2017 off-year elections showed strength not just among voters in the Rising American Electorate, but among those who ran and won elections for Democrats. In Virginia, Democrats comprised a record high of 41 percent of voters (compared to 30 percent who identified as Republicans), according to exit polls, and Rising American Electorate groups went big for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. Exit polls show that 77 percent of unmarried women went for Gov.-elect Ralph Northam, the Democrat, over Republican Ed Gillespie. That compares to 67 percent of single females who voted for Clinton over Trump in Virginia last year.

Young people, too, turned out to elect Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey Nov. 8, according to data collected by The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Nearly three-fourths of voters 18-29 cast ballots for New Jersey Gov.-elect Phil Murphy over Republican Kim Guadagno. And in Virginia, turnout among under-30 voters went from 17 percent in 2009 to 26 percent in 2013 to 34 percent this year, according to CIRCLE. While Northam won the race by a 54-45 percent margin, 69 percent of young voters favored Northam, the group found.

Overall, more than half of the Virginia vote Nov. 8 was from the Rising American Electorate coalition, according to the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, which tracks trends in the voter group.

Further, the winning candidates themselves were drawn from the Rising American Electorate last month. Topeka, Kansas, elected its first Puerto Rican mayor, a single parent named Michelle De La Isla. Helena, Montana, elected as its new mayor Wilmot Collins, a Liberian refugee. Virginia elected its first two Latinas and first female Asian-American to the House of Delegates. Four transgender candidates were elected across the country. Hoboken chose its first Sikh mayor; African-American women won mayoralities in Framingham, Massachusetts and Charlotte, North Carolina, while voters in Statesboro, Georgia, Cairo, Georgia, Milledgeville, Georgia, Georgetown, South Carolina and St. Paul, Minnesota elected their first black mayors.

That’s all tremendously encouraging to Democrats, especially after their deep disappointment over the 2016 results. But there are still warning signs and roadblocks as the party seeks to extend its wins to federal seats next year.

Voters who are part of the Rising American Electorate may be especially motivated by Trump and Republicans, worrying about health care and other policy, says WVWV Action Fund president Page Gardner. But the same group has added barriers to voting, such as voter ID laws, she says. Gardner point to a study from the Voter Participation Center that projected (before last month’s elections) that 40 million fewer people will show up to the polls in 2018 than in 2016 – and two thirds of the dropoff, Gardner says, is expected to be members of the Rising American Electorate. While voter participation is typically lower across-the-board in midterm elections, Gardner says, members of the Rising American Electorate tend to be more mobile, meaning they need to re-register to vote. That puts the onus on parties to motivate and mobilize voters in a year when the presidency is not at stake and voters in general tend to be less interested in going to the trouble of getting to the polls.

Last month’s surprisingly strong showing for Democrats “is a good indicator, but I wouldn’t take it to the bank,” Gardner says.

]]>In his article today, Voting at black colleges has tumbled. Can Dems fix the apathy in time for 2018?, Tony Pugh for McClatchyquoted our recent report with the progressive firm Lake Research Partners:

Once prized fighters in the battle for voting rights, students at America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities dropped their guard in the 2016 elections.

Voter turnout among the estimated 300,000 students at HBCUs fell nearly 11 percent from 2012 to 2016, according to a national survey by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University. The decline, while consistent with a fall off among black voters of all ages in 2016, was a sharp departure …

Certainly, the lower turnout reflected the absence of President Barack Obama from the Democratic ticket in 2016, a lack of enthusiasm for the new standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, and a weakening of the longtime allegiance between the party and African American youth. But the worst may be yet to come.

If historic trends hold, Democrats could see black voter turnout drop 30 percent in 2018, resulting in 5.2 million fewer African American voters, according to a report by the non-partisan Voter Participation Center and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

Turnout among millennials, ages 18 to 34, could fall 35 percent next year, for a loss of 25.4 million voters, the report found.

Declines of this magnitude among overlapping groups who largely support Democrats could dash the party’s hopes of re-taking Congress in next year’s mid-term elections when turnout typically falters and Republicans usually vote in higher numbers.

“It’s a big warning” for Democrats, said Lake. “It’s a big wake-up call. I think people have no idea the volume we’re talking about.”

]]>NEW ANALYSIS: Early Voting in Virginia Among Rising American Electorate Is Outperforming 2013 Levelshttp://www.voterparticipation.org/2017/11/new-analysis-early-voting-virginia-among-rising-american-electorate-outperforming-2013-levels/
Mon, 06 Nov 2017 23:29:41 +0000http://www.voterparticipation.org/?p=2978A new analysis by the Voter Participation Center of 2017 absentee voting and early voting in Virginia shows that key groups in the Rising American Electorate — unmarried women, people of color, and young people — have voted in higher numbers than they did in the 2013 Virginia elections.

A new analysis by the Voter Participation Center of 2017 absentee voting and early voting in Virginia shows that key groups in the Rising American Electorate — unmarried women, people of color, and young people — have voted in higher numbers than they did in the 2013 Virginia elections. The RAE also commanded a larger share of absentee and early voting than they did in 2013.

“It’s great that Virginians are taking advantage of options to vote early and by absentee,” said Page Gardner, president of the Voter Participation Center. “Our democracy works best when people exercise their right to vote and have their voices heard. I’m encouraged to see higher levels of participation among the Rising American Electorate than 2013 in early voting in such a critical election for the future of the Commonwealth and the country.”